Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai on Thursday said while his party accepted the Erode (East) byelection verdict, the real test of the strength of the parties will be the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
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He said that bypolls, which predominantly went in favour of the ruling parties, did not carry much significance, and his party was looking forward to the election in 2024.
Noting that his party was vocal about the importance of the AIADMK contesting on the ‘two leaves’ symbol in the byelection, he said the results had highlighted the strength required to defeat the ruling party, which had a lot of resources at its disposal.
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He ruled out the possibility of a united front emerging against the BJP at the national level, for which an appeal was made by DMK president and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Wednesday. He said he did not see the presence of leaders of the Congress and other parties at the meeting organised by the DMK on Wednesday as significant, as leaders like Mamata Banerjee, K. Chandrashekar Rao, Arvind Kejriwal and Pinarayi Vijayan were absent.
He said the victories recorded by the BJP in Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland were the outcome of the work done by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre for the northeastern States.
Tamil Maanila Congress president G.K. Vasan said the DMK-led alliance’s victory in Erode (East) was a victory for money power and not democracy. He alleged that a new tactic of confining voters to a particular place by giving them money to prevent them from engaging with the campaign of the Opposition parties was used.
Mr. Vasan also congratulated the BJP for its electoral victories in the three northeastern States.